Actress Raquel Welch has Died at the age of 82. Remembered as 1960's Sex Symbol

Raquel Welch has died at the age of 82. Her family says she had "a brief illness" before dying.

Jo Raquel Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became best-selling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Hannie Caulder (1971). She made several television variety specials.

Through her portrayal of strong female characters, which helped in her breaking the mold of the traditional sex symbol, Welch developed a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s. Her rise to stardom in the mid-1960s was partly credited with ending Hollywood's vigorous promotion of the blonde bombshell.

She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in The Three Musketeers. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Film for her performance in the film Right to Die (1987). In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History". Playboy ranked Welch No. 3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list. She was recently in Ice Spice's new music video "In Ha Mood"

In 1968, Welch appeared with Frank Sinatra in the detective film Lady in Cement, a sequel to the film Tony Rome (1967). She played the socialite Kit Forrest, the romantic interest of Tony Rome. Welch said later wittily that she catches the film from time to time and now realizes Kit Forrest was an alcoholic: "I'm watching this movie and I'm thinking, 'What the hell has she got on?' At one point, I had this epiphany: 'Oh, she's an alcoholic!' I didn't know that. How could I miss that?" She reportedly was so smitten with Sinatra she forgot to act: "I think I was just so enamoured with Frank Sinatra, you know. He's hypnotic."

Welch married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, on May 8, 1959, with whom she had two children, Damon Welch (born November 6, 1959) and Latanne "Tahnee" Welch (born December 26, 1961). James and Raquel Welch separated in 1962 and divorced in 1964; she has retained Welch's last name ever since. She married producer Patrick Curtis in 1967 and divorced him in 1972. In 1980, she married producer André Weinfeld, divorcing him in 1990. Welch wed Richard Palmer, owner of Mulberry Street Pizzeria, in 1999 but then separated from him in 2003 and later divorced. Welch says she will not remarry.

Welch posed for Playboy in 1979, but she never did a fully nude shoot. Hugh Hefner later wrote, "Raquel Welch, one of the last of the classic sex symbols, came from the era when you could be considered the sexiest woman in the world without taking your clothes off. She declined to do complete nudity, and I yielded gracefully. The pictures prove her point."

Welch refused to take all her clothes off on screen or pose naked throughout her career spanning five decades, saying this was the way she was brought up. Tahnee followed her mother's December 1979 example and appeared on the cover of Playboy in the November 1995 issue and in a nude pictorial inside it.

While her image in the 1960s was that of a torrid sex temptress, Welch's private life was quite different. Welch once famously said, "What I do on the screen is not to be equated with what I do in my private life. Privately, I am understated and dislike any hoopla". She also admitted, "I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding".